rat haus reality press is
deeply honored and greatful for the opportunity to mirror local copies of
the following papers, speech transcripts, and other works by
Dr. Mae-Wan Ho. Like
Dr. John Gofman, she has
unconditionally committed herself to champion, honor and serve life's
needs. Like Laurens van der Post
she values Carl Jung's contributions to seeing our selves and
our modern world wholistically and thus to apprehend the formidable
forces of light and dark that make us both what we are and
what we can be. We collectively owe a debt of gratitude to those like
Mae-Wan who employ their wisdom, intelligence, and creativity to make
science once more accountable to life. Only in this way can we,
as a species, successfully grow beyond our adolescent reductionist
and mechanistic phase that promotes commercial gain as the paramount
goal of scientific exploration of our world and universe.

In 1999, I co-founded the Institute
of Science in Society (ISIS) of which I am Director. I-SIS is a
not-for-profit organisation, promoting socially and ecologically
accountable science and the integration of science in society. I-SIS
also represent a group of scientists around the world (currently 364
from some 40 countries [457 scientists from 56 countries as of Sept
2001]) who have co-signed a
World Scientists
Statement and Open Letter to All Governments, calling for a
moratorium on environmental releases of GMOs on grounds that they
are unsafe, and to revoke and ban patents on life-forms and living
processes, on grounds that they are unethical.

We must actively connect the genetic engineering debate with holistic,
ecological sciences. It is the most effective way to recapture the
agenda from the corporations.

May others be as inspired and as expanded as we are being by
taking inside the awareness and perceptions of Dr. Mae-Wan Ho.

Many remarkable individuals and local communities are indeed changing their
own lives and the world around them for the better. They all do so by learning
from nature and recognizing that it is the symbiotic, mutualistic
relationships which sustain ecosystems and make all life prosper, including
the human beings who are active, sensitive participants in the ecosystem as
a whole [44].
The
same organic revolution has been happening in western science over the past
thirty years. Jim Lovelocks Gaia theory, for example, invites us to see
the earth as one super-organism [45]. Even
more remarkable is the message from quantum theory: that we are inseparably
entangled with one another and with all nature, which we participate in
co-creating [46]. It is this holistic, organic
perspective that can enable us to negotiate our path out of the moral maze
of genetic engineering biotechnology. It provides the basis of
a new ethic of science that can reshape society and transform the very
texture and meaning of our lives. Seattle has shown us that things can be
different. Society does not have to be ruled by the dominant culture.
Science can transcend the dominant status quo to reshape society
for the public good, which is also the private good. We begin to
appreciate how the purpose of each organism and species is entangled with
that of every other. Our humanity is a function of this entangled whole,
and we cannot do arbitrary violence to one another, nor to the nature of
other species without violating our own. The ethic of science is no
different from that of being human.

If you want to stay informed on the GM debate why not subscribe to
the Institute of Science in Society's free newsletter I-SIS news.
All issues are available at
www.i-sis.org.uk/isisnews.shtml,
but by joining the I-SIS information list you can have new editions, and other
press releases sent straight to you.

The following files are mirrored with permission
from
their sources
at the
Institute of Science in Society (ISIS)
website.
All works by Mae-Wan Ho with additional authors indicated where present.

The debate on genetic engineering biotechnology is dogged by the
artificial separation imposed between "pure" science and the issues it
gives rise to. "Ethics" is deemed to be socially determined, and therefore
negotiable, while the science is seen to be beyond reproach, as it is the
"laws" of nature. The same goes for the distinction between "technology"
-- the application of science -- from the science. Risk assessments are to
do with the technology, leaving the science equally untouched. The technology
can be bad for your health, but not the science. In this article, I shall
show why science cannot be separated from moral values nor from the technology
that shapes our society. In other words, bad science is unquestionably
bad for one's health and well-being, and should be avoided at all costs.
Science is, above all, fallible and negotiable, because we have the choice,
to do or not to do. It should be negotiated for the public good. That is
the only ethical position one can take with regard to science. Otherwise,
we are in danger of turning science into the most fundamentalist of religions,
that, working hand in hand with corporate interests, will surely usher
in the brave new world.

I am making a case for organicist science. It is not yet a conscious
movement but a Zeitgeist I personally embrace, so I really mean to
persuade you to do likewise by giving it a more tangible shape. The new
organicism, like the old, is dedicated to the knowledge of the organic
whole, hence, it does not recognize any discipline boundaries. It is to be
found between all disciplines. Ultimately, it is an unfragmented
knowledge system by which one lives. There is no escape clause allowing
one to plead knowledge `pure' or `objective', and hence having nothing to
do with life. As with the old organicism, the knowing being participates
in knowing as much as in living. Participation implies responsibility,
which is consistent with the truism that there can be no freedom without
responsibility, and conversely, no responsiblity without freedom. There is
no placing mind outside nature as Descartes has done, the knowing being is
wholeheartedly within nature: heart and mind, intellect and feeling
(Ho, 1994a). It
is non-dualist and holistic. In all those respects, its
affinities are with the participatory knowledge systems of traditional
indigenous cultures all over the world. . . .
The
organism maximizes both local freedom and global intercommunication.
One comes to the startling discovery that the coherent organism is in a
very real sense completely free. Nothing is in control, and yet everything
is in control. Thus, it is the failure to transcend the mechanistic
framework that makes people persist in enquiring which parts are in
control, or issuing instructions; or whether free will exists, and who
choreographs the dance of molecules. Does "consciousness"
control matter or vice versa? These questions are meaningless when
one understands what it is to be a coherent, organic whole. An organic
whole is an entangled whole, where part and whole, global and local are so
thoroughly implicated as to be indistinguishable, and each part is as much
in control as it is sensitive and responsive. Choreographer and dancer are
one and the same. The `self' is a domain of coherent activities, in the
ideal, a pure state that permeates the whole of our being with no definite
localizations or boundaries, as Bergson has described.

All the elements for a science of the organism are there between the
disciplines, precisely as envisaged by the pioneer thinkers. I have put
some of the key elements together in my book,
The Rainbow and The Worm,
The Physics of Organisms, ...
which is patterned after Erwin Schrödinger's What is Life? It
attempts to explain organic wholeness and complexity based on contemporary
quantum physics and non-equilibrium thermodynamics. It gives new insights
into physiological regulation, bioenergetics and cell biology, many of
which were predicted by the pioneers. Also consistent with their vision,
the new science of the organism promises to restore all the qualities that
have been exorcised from life and nature, to reaffirm and extend our
intuitive, poetic, and even romantic notions of nature's unity. . . .
Science
shapes society not just through the technologies it creates,
but through values and assumptions that motivate human beings, define
social norms and inform the policies of nations. That is where I believe
the science of the organism may hold the key to a more sustainable and
spiritual world.
I
take science, in the most general terms, to be any active
knowledge system shared by a society of human beings that gives both
meaning to their way of life and the means whereby to live sustainably
with nature. Science, therefore, has an overriding obligation to be
socially responsive and responsible. It is inseparable from the entire
culture of society and its highest moral values, which define the public
good. Sustainability is a moral imperative to achieve and safeguard the
manifold conditions of a healthy and fulfilling life for present and
future generations.
What
does it mean to be an organism? To be an organism is to be
possessed of the irrepressible tendency towards being whole; towards being
part of a larger whole. One of the key concepts in understanding organic
wholeness is coherence, the ideal of which is quantum coherence. Quantum
coherence aptly describes the perfect coordination of living activities in
our body, and there is growing empirical evidence that it may indeed
underlie living organization, as described in my book.

Sustainable agriculture is predicated on a holistic, ecological
perspective anathema to reductionist mechanistic science. Mechanistic
science has been thoroughly discredited in the course of the 20th century.
Mechanical physics went first of all with relativity and quantum physics.
Biology was the last to go with the new genetics.
The
new genetics is radically ecological, organic and holistic. That is
why genetic engineering, at least in its current form, can never succeed.
It is based on misconceptions that organisms are machines, and on a denial
of the complexity and flexibility of the organic whole.
The
challenge for western scientists is to develop a holistic science to
help revitalise all kinds of non-corporate sustainable agriculture and
holistic medicine that can truly bring food security and health to the
world.

To try to understand disease in terms of genes and protein interactions
is worse than trying to understand how a machine works in terms of its
nuts and bolts, simply because the parts of the organism, unlike those of
a machine, are inseparably tangled up with one another. Mechanistic
understanding in terms of interacting parts is extremely unlikely to lead
to the design of better drugs. For that, we require knowledge of the
design of the human organism. And no amount of information on genes and
protein interactions will ever add up to the complex, entangled whole that
is the organism.

Open Letter from World Scientists to All Governments
Concerning Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs)

- signed by 454 scientists from 56 countries, as of August 2001.

The scientists are extremely concerned about the hazards of GMOs to
biodiversity, food safety, human and animal health, and demand a
moratorium on environmental releases in accordance with the precautionary
principle.

They are opposed to GM crops that will intensify corporate monopoly,
exacerbate inequality and prevent the essential shift to sustainable
agriculture that can provide food security and health around the world.

They call for a ban on patents of life-forms and living processes
which threaten food security, sanction biopiracy of indigenous knowledge
and genetic resources and violate basic human rights and dignity.

They want more support on research and development of non-corporate,
sustainable agriculture that can benefit family farmers all over the
world.

We, the undersigned scientists, call for the immediate suspension of all
environmental releases of GM crops and products; for patents on life-forms
and living processes to be revoked and banned; and for a comprehensive
public enquiry into the future of agriculture and food security for all.

Personal Qualifications listed at the top of
Report
on horizontal gene transfer
- Department of Public
Prosecution versus Gavin Harte and others, New Ross, Ireland,
March 22, 1999:

Mae-Wan Ho, Reader in Biology at
the Open University, B. Sc. (First Class) 1964, and Ph. D. 1967, H K
University; more than 30 years in research and 25 years teaching
experience; nearly 200 publications covering human biochemical genetics,
molecular genetics, evolution, developmental biology, and biophysics.
Awards include, Chan Kai Ming Prize for Biological Sciences (HK) 1964:
Fellow of the National Genetics Foundation (USA) 1971-1974; Vida Sana
Award (Spain) 1998; Guest of Honour in Women of the Year Luncheon &
Assembly (UK) 1998. From 1994, Scientific Advisor to the
Third World Network
and other public interest organizations on biotechnology and
biosafety. Debated issues in the United Nations, the World Bank, the
European Parliament, in the UK, USA and many other countries all over the
world. Author of many papers and reports for the public and for
policy-makers, frequent broadcaster and public lecturer. Recent
publications relevant to genetic engineering: